The great pyramid passages and chambers

LETTER II.

Arab Village, near the Pyramids of Gizeh. Friday, 4th June, 1909.

DEAR BRETHREN,—At present I am sitting in a house in the Arab village close to the Great Pyramid—Plate II.

222 I have now been in Egypt for a week, and have been very busy. Soon after my arrival I learned that Professor C. Piazzi Smyth’s Arab assistant, Ali Gabri, or, as Professor Smyth misspelt his name, Alee Dobree, died four years ago (December, 1904. Professor Smyth died on 2ist February, 1900). I found, however, that his son, Hadji Ali Gabri, was following in his father’s steps, so I engaged his services, and have found him very helpful to me in my photographic work.

223 Mr. L. Dow Covington, an American, has been working at the Great Pyramid for the past eight years, off and on. When I came here a week ago, he was just completing some excavating work at the foot of the north side of the Great Pyramid, and you can appreciate my pleasant surprise when I beheld not only the three historical casing-stones discovered many years ago by Col. Howard Vyse, and now again brought to the light of day, but sixteen others, all of them in one continuous row—Plate XXIII. These stones demonstrate the fact that the Great Pyramid was formerly covered or cased with beautiful smooth casing-stones, a fact which formerly some had been inclined to doubt.

224 It was in May of the year 1837 that Col. Howard Vyse sunk a shaft down through the fifty feet of rubbish immediately in front of the Entrance, and discovered the three casing-stones at the eastern extremity of the row—Plate VII. He was greatly impressed with their size, and considered that the workmanship displayed in them was unrivalled. When they were first uncovered, they were perfect; but during the short time they remained exposed while he was at the Pyramids, they were, to his regret, much defaced by vandalism. He therefore felt it his duty to protect them by covering them again with a large quantity of rubbish; but he wrote: “I am sorry to add, that my precautions were unsuccessful, and that the blocks have been again uncovered and much injured.” (See Plate V.)

225 Happily, however, the Colonel’s informant was wrong; for Professor Flinders Petrie wrote that in the year 1881, just when he required them for the purpose of measuring, etc., the three stones were again uncovered by a contractor who was using the rubbish for mending the road to the Pyramids, and he found them in the condition in which they were when covered in 1837. From then till now, these three stones have remained exposed. Mr. Covington informs me that he uncovered the fourth one in the year 1902, and that the whole four stones were illustrated by Professor Breasted of

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